


Regal

by Caffeinated_Owlbear



Series: Crush [2]
Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: F/M, Flirting, Hyperion CEO Handsome Jack (Borderlands), Hyperion Corporate Shenanigans, I Know It Says OC But That's What Meg Is Basically, Jack being Jack, Meg Will Be Jack's Second Wife Eventually, No Smut, Rarepair, Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:26:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24710794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caffeinated_Owlbear/pseuds/Caffeinated_Owlbear
Summary: Being a good PA means being professional regardless of what feelings you may be harboring for your boss. Meg is a very good PA. She appreciates the opportunity to work with Jack. She's determined to never let on that her feelings for him go beyond respect and admiration for his work.She's been doing great until tonight.Set some time between the events of The Pre-Sequel and Borderlands 2.====Meg has never denied that she believed Handsome Jack’s moniker was thoroughly well-earned. And, unlike many others on Helios, she’s always been able to appreciate his good looks without getting weak in the knees.Right now, however, he's not 'attractive'. He's not 'handsome'. He's… magnificent.
Relationships: Handsome Jack (Borderlands)/Original Female Character(s), Handsome Jack/Meg (Borderlands)
Series: Crush [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1792126
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	Regal

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. We know from the end of Tales that some time after Angel's mom died, Jack had a second wife, and all we know about her is that she left when she found out about the Control Core.  
> 2\. I'm firmly in the 'Make Meg Canon' camp, and I love the idea of Jack and Meg having good rapport. For frick's sake, the man can use a friend. See also: [my platonic fic about the two of them](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23926654).
> 
> With so much room for interpretation left by (1), and my feelings about (2), a friend and I ended up with a headcanon in which we decided that Jack's second marriage was to Meg. A brief but nice thing. Because why the hell not. The man can also use some happiness before it all goes to shit in BL2.
> 
> Jack's in his mid-40's, Meg in her late 30's. This is how that relationship begins.  
> Welcome to the rarepair.

* * *

Meg finishes updating Jack’s schedule in her ECHO pad, reaches for the intercom, then pulls her hand away and gets to her feet. It's late, and Jack didn't give explicit instructions that he shouldn't be bothered, so he won't mind her letting herself into his office. Very probably. And if he minds, the worst he'll do, given the circumstances, is snarl something about 'sure, come in, make yourself at home, why don't ya, pumpkin'. To which Meg will apologize and make to leave. Which he'll stop her from doing with a 'well, now that you're here…', followed by a series of requests featuring various documents and coffee.

Alternatively, if he doesn't mind her coming in, then the conversation will go straight to business.

So, in other words, the intercom would be better, one way or another. And yet, there she goes.

Meg pushes open one half of the double doors and walks in, her shoes producing a quiet clack on the marble-like floor, enough to make her presence known to Jack at his desk. (You would think that with the desk being all the way up by the windows, a good stroll away from the door, one would need to listen hard to hear a visitor. But having stood by Jack's desk before, Meg can confirm that some elaborate acoustics are at work in this place.)

Jack isn't at his desk, though. A quick glance around the office later, Meg's eyes find him over by one of the side windows. He's facing away from her, looking outside, where Elpis hangs in all its pale purple glory.

Meg doesn't take the central path that leads from the door to Jack’s desk, but veers to the side, passing behind the back of one of the giant statues of the man. That means she is also, technically, approaching Jack from the back. Not a smart move, not by a long shot. But Meg is ninety percent certain he already knows she's there, and the implications involved in the remaining ten percent give her the jolt of the sweeter kind of adrenaline. (You shouldn’t be working for Hyperion if you don’t enjoy flirting with death at least a little bit.)

That said, Meg isn't trying to keep her presence a secret, and by the time she stops, some twenty feet behind Jack, her ninety-percent certainty from earlier is pushing ninety-nine. But the adrenaline doesn't drain away; if anything, it floods her further at the sight of him.

Finding Jack attractive isn't new to her. Meg has never denied, to herself or anyone who cared to ask, that she believed Handsome Jack’s moniker was thoroughly well-earned. And, unlike many others on Helios, she’s always been able to appreciate his good looks without getting weak in the knees.

Right now, however, as he stands by the floor-to-ceiling window, still facing away from her, feet planted apart, hands on hips, head high, his normally sharp silhouette made that much more striking by the purple glow of Elpis… He's not 'attractive'. He's not 'handsome'. He's… magnificent.

This isn't entirely new, either. She's seen him in a variety of situations where he radiated power like he’s doing right now. And _that…_ yeah, that's something Meg's still teaching her knees to be steadfast about.

"Checking out the boss man, Megan?" Jack says without turning around.

The sound of her name throws her. Again, this whole situation isn't new; in fact, he'd said this exact thing, _almost_ this exact thing, to her before, in situations where she was doing anything _but_ checking him out, and Meg would always have a response ready, always a twofer of deflection plus compliment, something like 'oh, but who would blame me'.

But the sound of her name, her full name, in his mouth, throws her. She flounders for an instant. He notices that. He doesn't move a muscle or make a sound to show it, but she knows he notices.

"No…" Even as the word forms, Meg realizes what a colossally idiotic answer she's about to give, and twists her words like a cat mid-fall, desperately hoping to land on her feet. "Not… exclusively."

"What'd you mean?" Jack turns around. There's half a smile on his lips, and his eyes are bright in the purple glow. Meg's breath does not hitch because she knows it likes doing that in situations just like this one, so she's paying very close attention to inhaling and exhaling as normal. As much attention as she can spare.

"'Checking out' makes it sound like I was ogling you." She's happy to find that her voice actually sounds pretty normal.

"You know I don't mind," he drawls the last word a bit.

"I know.” Doesn’t she just. “But it would be the wrong word to use here."

"So what's the right word?” Jack watches her, his hands still on his hips. Meg keeps her gaze glued, stapled, welded to his face. She will not let her eyes stray now and undermine her entire argument.

“I guess I was… admiring you.”

Jack takes a step towards her. “Is that so.” Not a question, not in the slightest. 

Meg stands her ground. “Yes.” A thoroughly unnecessary answer.

He stops a few feet away from her. “So how’d I look?”

That one _is_ a question. But it’s one Meg has an answer to, and she knows it’s an answer Jack is going to like. She allows herself a smile as she speaks, lets her voice dip half an octave.

“Regal.”

She can see it land like a moonshot and has a few seconds to enjoy the shockwave: an eyebrow arching just so, a nostril flaring as a breath is drawn, teeth flashing as the smile gets bigger.

Then Jack closes the distance between them. She has to tilt her head a bit to meet his eyes.

“Regal, huh.”

“Uh-huh.” 

“Well, do you know _why_ I look…” His upper lip bares his teeth. “Regal?”

Jack’s face fills most of her view now, the purple glow a corona around him. Appropriate.

“Because…” She hates that she has to swallow before answering, but she’d hate it more if her dry mouth ruined what she’s going to say. “Because you’re the king?”

There’s a knuckle under her jaw, a thumb on her chin. Meg feels her head tilt backward just a little more.

“You make it sound like you’re not so sure about that, sweetheart.”

“Oh. My bad.” She tries to bow her head, but the fingers under her chin won’t let her.

“Well?”

Meg draws a breath and looks into the eyes in front of her, blue and green and tinged with purple.

“You’re the king, Jack.”

She shouldn’t have said his name at the end of that sentence. Even by the standards of this entire sequence of everyone, mostly Meg, taking things way too far, letting herself say his name _like that_ was that one thing too many. That one step over the line that you look back on later and think - yes, that was the one, no doubt about it.

“Oh, damn straight I am, baby,” says Jack. His voice is rough. His grin’s turned wolfish. His fingers tighten on her chin.

Definitely, absolutely, unequivocally one step too far. And she wouldn’t take it back for all the eridium on Pandora.

Jack leans his lips to her ear. “Damn straight I am.”

His breath sends a jolt of electricity up her sides. It travels through her ribs one by one, wraps around her middle like a shock band, then shoots upward through her spine. She squares her shoulders, and Jack, whether by chance or in response to her move, chooses that very second to let go of her chin. 

Fluke or not, her change of posture changes their bodies’ dynamic in that instant: suddenly, it’s not he who’s letting go of her, it’s both of them who are separating from each other. Based on the way Jack takes a step back, there’s a chance he actually bought that.

She’d like to think that he bought that.

Meg will think about this some more later, when she has the time to savor the bloom of warmth that thought sends through her, and doesn’t have to suppress the satisfied smile that it threatens to put on her face.

For now, by luck, chance, or unexpected gift from fate, it seems she’s landed on her feet after all. She is not going to waste that.

Standing at a more reasonable distance from Jack, Meg shifts her weight on one foot and pulls her ECHO pad out of her side pocket. The few seconds it takes her to do that are enough to remember why she came into Jack’s office in the first place.

“Now that we’ve cleared _that_ up... I have some updates about your schedule for tomorrow.”


End file.
